Why does Lithuania have such a great beer culture?

I think everyone will agree that for Lithuania to
be one of the world's great beer cultures is a
bit surprising. For years I've been wondering why this would be, and
now I'm finally in a position to propose an answer. And it is really a
bit of a puzzler. Right north of the border is Latvia, where they
speak a related language, and share the same Soviet heritage, but not
the beer culture. Why?

Clearly, the stagnation, isolation, and general backwardness of the
Soviet system must have done much to preserve traditional brewing
practices. It can't be the whole answer, however. Norway and Finland
have preserved traditional brewing, without having ever been
communist. Fragments survive in Estonia and Latvia, too, but
Lithuania has a far stronger beer culture than all of these
countries. Again, why?

Let's start in 1945. At this point, all the Baltic countries have
been annexed into the Soviet Union. However, they are not the same,
for reasons I explain in my short history of the
Baltic countries. Those differences turn out to be important.

Firstly, at this point (1945), Latvia was much more industrialized
than Lithuania. Traditional brewing is usually associated with
farming, so it's likely that this meant that traditional beer culture
was already much weaker than in Lithuania. Further, since Latvia had a
Baltic German ruling elite, bigger breweries would predominantly be
owned by ethnic Germans and therefore would likely brew in the German
tradition.

Red army soldiers statue, Vilnius

Secondly, the Lithuanian Soviet Republic was run by the Lithuanians
themselves to a much greater degree than in Estonia and Latvia. Many
Lithuanians have told me that in Latvia the Soviets destroyed
traditional brewing culture, but in Lithuania they unofficially
accepted it. That fits fairly well with written material I've seen
from various places. Atis
from Latvia also blamed the Soviets for destroying traditional
Latvian brewing.

Thirdly, Lithuania did not see the same influx of Russian
immigrants that Latvia and Estonia did, and that will have helped,
too. Russians eventually came to make up the majority of the
population of Latvia and Estonia, and it's clear that this will have
damaged brewing culture dramatically, too. In Lithuania Russians never
made up more than 10% of the population.

As you see from what I wrote on traditional
Nordic beer, traditional brewing dies by degrees. Traditional
ingredients, methods, and ways of thinking disappear one by one, until
ultimately people are brewing with international malt, pharmacy hops,
and baking yeast, and the tradition is dead.

Different countries have progressed along this scale to different
degrees. Lithuania hasn't really taken the first step. Norway and
Finland have taken a couple, Sweden, Estonia and Latvia a couple more,
and Denmark has gone all the way. From what I'm told, the tradition is
not completely dead in Latvia (and in Saaremaa in Estonia the
kooduolut still lives), it's just much, much weaker than in Lithuania.

Thus far, I think I've explained how the tradition stayed alive
into Soviet times. From reading about the breweries it's clear that in
the Soviet period many of the home brewers expanded their operations
beyond simple home brewing, and started producing beer for sale. This
would be for occasions like weddings, funerals, and for state
officials. It's not clear whether this was entirely legal (surely it
must have counted as private enterprise), but it seems to have been
tacitly accepted, as Lithuanians were saying.

Traditional brewing equipment, Dusetos

Traditional homebrewing methods do not scale well. They are highly
labour-intensive, and the equipment used is not designed for scale.
Under the Soviet system, it was impossible to purchase equipment, or
to get expertise from abroad, so these home brewers were pretty much
left to their own devices. It's clear that they started improvising,
making their own equipment and changing brewing methods in order to
scale up. In so doing, they basically modernized Lithuanian home
brewing culture into a new beer culture different from all others,
since it developed in total isolation.

This process began under the Soviets, and then when independence
and the market economy arrived in 1991, it exploded. Within a few
years Lithuania had over 200 breweries. That's a truly astounding
figure. The British were recently delighted to pass 1000 breweries,
but to achieve a similar figure for breweries per capita as mid-90s
Lithuania they'll have to go well over 3500 breweries.

Of course, as with other early craft brewing booms, most of these
breweries have since disappeared, and this is an important
development. It means that the breweries with the lowest quality and
biggest consistency problems have been weeded out, so what remains is
the best and most successful breweries. The Davra, Rinkuškiai,
Joalda, Jovaru Alus, Su Puta, and Piniavos
breweries at least are among the breweries that were started just
after independence, arising directly out of the home brewing
tradition.

Suddenly it doesn't seem so strange that Lithuania should have a
unique beer culture.